There Aren’t a Lot of Reasons to Get Excited About a New Amazon Smartphone

more than a decade after bailing on the dismal Fire Phone, Amazon is giving the smartphone a second try. Reuters reports that Amazon's Devices and Services unit is working on a smartphone—dubbed Transformer—with Amazon's Alexa+ AI assistant and shopping as a major focus of the experience.

Details are slim. It's unclear what this smartphone would cost, how much Amazon is spending to develop Transformer, and what operating system it will run. There's no word on when it will launch, and there's still also a chance the project could be scrapped altogether. When reached by WIRED, an Amazon spokesperson said the company doesn't comment on rumors and speculation.

Amazon famously launched the Fire Phone in 2014, but it was discontinued shortly after due to a limited app ecosystem and terrible sales. Alongside a gimmicky 3D display, it had an app called Firefly that allowed you to buy things (from Amazon.com, naturally) by pointing the camera at an object.

The company is rumored to launch a Fire tablet this year that runs Google's Android operating system for the first time instead of Amazon's homegrown Fire OS, which notably lacks native access to Google's popular Play Store. Such a move suggests this new smartphone could run Android; however, the Reuters report indicates that Transformer might have an AI interface that would “eliminate the need for traditional app stores.”

Generative UI

This isn't the first talk about a new kind of operating system or a generative user interface. At Mobile World Congress 2024, T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, showed off a concept phone that generated an interface as you spoke to it rather than relying on traditional apps. Nothing CEO Carl Pei told WIRED last year that he believes future smartphones will have one app, “that will be the OS.”

AI companies are honing their chatbots' agentic skills—where they can complete tasks on your behalf—bringing us one step closer to this reality. Google recently debuted Task Automation in its Gemini assistant on Samsung and Pixel phones, allowing users to ask the bot to order an Uber or food from apps like DoorDash. OpenAI is working with ex-Apple designer Jony Ive on new AI-powered devices designed to become smarter and more powerful collaborators than our smartphones, but details are scant on what these gadgets could look like.

Reuters says Amazon's Transformer phone might be inspired by the Light Phone, a feature phone made by a Brooklyn company with some smart features designed to help people get away from daily smartphone distractions. While Amazon's device may not focus on digital detoxing, if Transformer were treated as a secondary device, it could find more pull in the hard-to-crack US smartphone market dominated by Samsung and Apple.

“What can they bring to end users that is not already available from the likes of Apple or Samsung? That's where I'm struggling to understand the rationale behind this project,” says Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of data and analytics at research group IDC. “If 10 years ago, a phone did not make any sense and it was obvious that it would not succeed, today is even worse.”

Jeronimo pointed out that even if Amazon may have started working on Transformer a year or so ago, the current economic environment would make the device much more costly than initially intended due to the memory crisis, supply-chain issues caused by the Iran war, and tariffs.

Meanwhile, nearly every major smartphone maker has its own AI capabilities that will likely be similar to what Amazon can offer. (Not to mention the fact that those other companies likely won't shove Amazon services and shopping down your throat.)

“If it's a phone, it's dead on arrival,” Jeronimo says. “From a hardware perspective, it will be completely impossible to compete against Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi. From a software perspective, they may have an opportunity, but that opportunity is very short-term, because Apple, Samsung, and Android in general are moving extremely fast."

If Alexa+ is the driving force behind Transformer, Jeronimo thinks the device could be a vehicle to explore the AI chatbot on a companion device that's always on your person. Alexa has largely lived inside fixed devices in the home; while you can install Alexa+ on your smartphone today, Amazon doesn't have much control over the experience. It can't be made the default assistant on iPhones, for example.

A phone-like device or wearable would grant Amazon that power, as well as more control over your data. Amazon recently bought Bee AI, an always-listening wearable that summarizes your conversations throughout the day, and even crafts to-do lists unprompted. Asked if Bee's tech will be integrated with Alexa, Bee cofounder Maria de Lourdes Zollo—who now works at Amazon—told WIRED at CES 2026 that there's “something in the works,” but couldn't share more.

Privacy Blunders

New Amazon hardware would have to contend with the company's checkered history in user privacy. It was ranked second to last in privacy in the 2025 Ranking Digital Rights Index. An investigation found that Amazon failed to protect customer data; its Ring cameras have created a suburban surveillance state; and a 2022 report found that Alexa voice transcripts were used for targeted advertising.

Alexander Gamero-Garrido, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in online privacy, contributed to the 2022 report. He says more recent research reveals that data points like age and gender can be identified via the voices interacting with Alexa devices, and that is being used for ad personalization.

“This is not a consumer device company that takes privacy very seriously,” Gamero-Garrido says. Since people use smartphones far more than Alexa or a Kindle, he says an Amazon smartphone today would “significantly increase the scale of the potential privacy harms.”

Gamero-Garrido thinks Amazon could use Transformer as a data-gathering tool to glean how people use its devices, build its advertising network, and compete with the likes of Alphabet and Meta, which are facing regulatory scrutiny in the European Union and California.

One way it could do this is through the Fire TV approach. This is Amazon's TV streaming platform integrated into a third-party TV (or via a dongle); while you may not have bought a Fire TV-powered TV from Amazon, the data collected by the operating system is still owned by the company.

“Whether they end up succeeding with this phone supplement device, or whether they eventually use a similar model where they install their operating system on other phones or ”light" phones that are built by third parties, it has the same effect," he says. “Ultimately, what Amazon is doing is centralizing all the network traffic through its own infrastructure so it can improve its advertising business.”

If Amazon can detect when a person is sick from the sound of their voice, then it can recommend that you buy specific cold medicine from Amazon Health—that's a real patent Amazon owns. If this is now powered on a device you carry everywhere, Gamero-Garrido says it can listen to more of your conversations and serve you better ads.

Even with its past regressions, customers have shown a general acceptance of Amazon's hardware, says Kassem Fawaz, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who researches security and privacy in consumer devices.

“I think when it comes to products, unfortunately, consumers value utility and price over privacy,” Fawaz wrote in an email to WIRED.

The accelerant here could be Amazon's Devices & Services lead, Panos Panay, who joined the company in 2023. Panay famously helped turn Microsoft's Surface line of computers into an aspirational hardware brand through his “pumped” and emotionally charged keynotes.

Panay has already brought that kind of energy to a few Amazon hardware announcements, like the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, though he has not matched th